So I am new to these forums, though I have been a lurker for quite some time. I want to get more involved in the community and figure out ways to make myself a better tank. Now I have a tendency to be raiding and all of the sudden figure out some new way to do something. Back in the first week of the firelands I started to think about cooldowns.

We have a few "short" cooldowns (All on a minute or less cd):

Divine ProtectionHoly ShieldWord of GloryHoly Radiance

We have a three "long" cooldowns (All 3 minutes or more):-Ardent Defender-Guardian of the Ancient Kings.-Lay on Hands.

(Note: Trinkets are important, but what is being used varies from tank to tank, and fight to fight.)

And we have our button Divine Guardian, but it doesn't help us directly.

So if our role in cataclysm is to reduce our damage taken to save our healers mana. Threat is important (*snicker* ) but ultimately we need to live as best as we can. So here was my idea.

After threat is established, and assuming that our DPS is not a major factor (Think hatchlings) would it be a good idea to rotate our minor cooldowns?

For example,You use Divine Protection and Holy RadianceAfter those finish you use hold shield then WoGRinse an repeat. Saving major cooldowns/trinkets for big mechanics.

I have tried this and unfortunately I can't tell just yet if it is a good idea or not. And I am here seeking opinions and insights.

Holy Radiance is a very weak "CD" if you can even call it that.Its pretty much a waste of a GCD unless the heal actually heals others in a time of need aswell, and thats pretty much only if you can fit it when you otherwise would have to throw Holy wrath/consecration, its gonna suck your mana aswell.I only use it for 2 fights, Beth (when moving into the raid after last tick of the debuff, before taunting), and Raggy, after the explosions in p2.

DPS is pretty much always a factor, Hatchlings is a perfect example of where it is a HUGE factor.And its a pretty bad example overall aswell, as you dont want to use your CDs in a rotation for the hatchlings, you wanna use them WHEN your gonna take a lot of damage.Its not about reducing damage the best, its about reducing the dmg intake when you otherwise would have been extremely hard to heal.

Sure, you dont wanna be using all your CDs as soon as you hit 50%, you wanna be able to anticipate things before they happen, and its not always easy, but its part of the challenge.Divine protection and holy shield is used very ofthen, since they are off GCD and cost nothing to cast.WoG on the other hand is used less and less, esp in a 25man, most of the times when you want it, its on GCD or you dont have 3HPs, so when you get it strong enough to matter, its eather to late, or the moment has passed and the healers have done their job.Its good for predictable damage, no doubt, but for those you usually have other tools aswell anyway.

While our role is to stand there and take it, and "survive", all we really do is stand there and "dps" with a few reactive CDs to use.On some fights the dps is very important, on some its less important, it should be more important that the tanks do proper damage in 10man compared to 25man.

About rotation of CDs, Its a great for Shannox, Beth and Baleroc, the other fights are to much other stuff happening that you wanna use your CDs for, even the "short" CDs.And all those 3 fights have great timing with eather a tankswap, or times with less damage on you that you can use to wait for your CDs.Like theres obviously no point using anything when you have the kiss from Beth, you really shouldnt have to use your CDs for shannox when he has thrown the spead (unless your stacks is high, but then you STILL wanna have them left for when he has the spear AND high stacks)Baleroc is prolly the only fight i find myself out of CDs at times, its a short fight aswell so the "long" CDs can only be used twice, and while the healers try to ramp their stacks up, you wanna use CDs to make it easy for them to heal, so they can last with more mana the whole fight.

The general advice is not to use cooldowns whenever you can simply because they are off cooldown but instead to use them proactively. For example I have divine protection glyphed and use that when I have 3 stacks of burning wound and my co tank is holding the boss. It reduces incoming damage at a point where my healer might be distracted by healing the other tank. The less attention he has to pay to me the better.

If you followed the cooldowns whenever in extreme circumstances that could lead to popping holy shield when you don't actually hold the boss and are only taking wound damage (this is just fire damage so HS not helpful)

I occasionally pop cooldowns together holy radiance and guardian when the raid is stacked taking the 12th flame swipe from Staghelm. Again reducing your damage by popping a cooldown just before you take a big hit is the advised method.

Tying your cooldowns together through macros or similar reduces your ability to use the right cooldown in the right circumstance and limits your ability to perform your role to the best of your ability.

Calleana wrote:The general advice is not to use cooldowns whenever you can simply because they are off cooldown but instead to use them proactively. For example I have divine protection glyphed and use that when I have 3 stacks of burning wound and my co tank is holding the boss. It reduces incoming damage at a point where my healer might be distracted by healing the other tank. The less attention he has to pay to me the better.

Thats a pretty bad example, as unglyphed DP is a lot better on ragnaros than having it glyphed.The Burning wound is NEVER going to even bring to low in seconds, unless you have raggy on you aswell, thus you dont want it glyphed.Only reason to have it glyphed would be for the Seeds, and since they explode every 1min, its a perfect CD for it, but if your tanking raggy aswell, unglyphed will still be a lot better, if your OTing that moment, the damage you take wont even bring you low anyway, i guess you can say p1 with the traps aswell, but still doesnt justify using it imo.And p3 (or p4 if your doing heroic) is all about physical damage reduction rather than small dot that is easy to predict and heal through.

Well this has been good. I appreciate the honest advice. So I want to expand on that a bit.

Its not about reducing damage the best, its about reducing the dmg intake when you otherwise would have been extremely hard to heal.

This sums up it pretty well for me. Now the follow up question is what is considered "hard" Any special ability, or otherwise. Do you use majors in conjunction with minors in these situations (IE using divine protection and Guardian at the same time) OR rather do you use each one separately? For example, let's say a boss had an ability called uber smack that did 50k damage. On a one minute interval. Do you use one cooldown per ability or do you use a combination.

Is there ever a time to use a combination of abilities or is the rule of thumb to always use one cooldown for each ability?

Calleana wrote:The general advice is not to use cooldowns whenever you can simply because they are off cooldown but instead to use them proactively. For example I have divine protection glyphed and use that when I have 3 stacks of burning wound and my co tank is holding the boss. It reduces incoming damage at a point where my healer might be distracted by healing the other tank. The less attention he has to pay to me the better.

Thats a pretty bad example, as unglyphed DP is a lot better on ragnaros than having it glyphed.

Baneslayer wrote:Is there ever a time to use a combination of abilities or is the rule of thumb to always use one cooldown for each ability?

When in panic, press everything No but theres very very few times its benefitial to overlapp CDs.Altho, using HS together with DP makes it a pretty strong CD, so if your going to take a lot of damage, and guardian is eather on CD, or you just dont wanna "waste" it, DP+HS isnt far off, it doesnt make up for it, but theres few cases when thats not enough to do the job aswell.

Jeremoot wrote:I would argue that it could be very useful if you have the 4pc.

12% parry really isnt that great.Its good to get from 4parts of gear, but its not much of a CD still, and i wouldnt use DP to get the parry (unless tanking decimation blades).And it certainly doesnt make up for getting DP glyph on Raggy, really ALL spelldmg you take there is eather really really predictable, or just really doesnt do much damage in the first place.

Only made it to phase 2 so far so I'll take your advice on DP. It does still illustrate the point raised well enough though.

Part of the joy of the community here is describing fights from a paladin tank perspective suggesting things like glyphed/ unglyphed DP for certain fights.

I generally do not use my cool downs together unless I really feel in danger of splatting e.g. In T11 when both of my healers went into the alternate realm in Valiona (no I have no idea how they both managed it either) I cycled cool downs and used some together to try not to die.

I partially disagree with this, although that its a pain to time it propperly makes it less usefull for most fights. 12% avoidance at the right moment can be a boost. And if you use Plea on or near pull, then its a decent chance to avoid 1 extra melee swing early in the pull when the healers may still be playing catchup. Not usually as good as T11-4pc, but in some situations, very powerfull.

My guild has started back farming H-halfus so a few folks can farm some speical items while we work for FL drops. As I have an avoidance set, I am the main Halfus tank. In my avoidance set I have ~15.5% each unbuffed dodge/parry. I have realized that the Molten Front stam trinket with on-use dodge would be good for H-halfus to manage MS stacks. Once I get the T12-4 piece bonus I could wait till DivPlea is over and during the 12% parry I could activate the Dodge trinket for a massive boost in MS avoidance; I think this would put me at ~77% (32% base + 5% - 2.4% miss + 25% Nether + 12% parry + ~5% trinket) to avoid halfus while everything is active. That would yield an approximately 5% chance for halfus to add a MS stack per swing (separate rolls for hit and MS stack), until everything started wearing off.

I partially disagree with this, although that its a pain to time it propperly makes it less usefull for most fights. 12% avoidance at the right moment can be a boost. And if you use Plea on or near pull, then its a decent chance to avoid 1 extra melee swing early in the pull when the healers may still be playing catchup. Not usually as good as T11-4pc, but in some situations, very powerfull.

If you have a feeling for how stressed / unstressed the healers are, you can use minor cooldowns to ease the load on them. For example, if the healers are busy trying to recover from a mechanic screwup that has brought the whole raid low. I can't really think of a specific example, maybe on H Bethilac, if your soakers miss an add and it explodes in the raid, popping a minor cd then while tanking the drone may be helpful (of course this is kind of a lousy example because the drone runs off to fixate on people)

You can also anticipate when the Jagged Tear is about to hit on Shannox and have a cooldown running then, it happens almost instantly after the spear is returned to him, and another time about 10 seconds after that. The biggest challenge is still trying to anticipate when you are going to be taking big damage (even from just simple melee attacks) and knowing your healers well enough and being aware enough of what is happening in the raid so know if they can cover you properly or if they need some help.

I also agree with Treckie that unglyphed DP is a lot better on Ragnaros simply because melee attacks are the vast majority of his damage on you. If you are worried about Magma Traps you can always use Mirror of Broken Images to help mitigate that (this is for H Rag where you are forced to wait 45 seconds at a minimum between each trap anyway)